Sachin Tendulkar vs Sourav Ganguly Stats: Test, ODI, T20I & IPL

On batting alone this is not a close comparison. Sachin Tendulkar made 15,921 Test runs at 53.78 and 18,426 in one-day internationals at 44.83; Sourav Ganguly made 7,212 at 42.17 and 11,363 at 41.02. Tendulkar leads on runs, average and hundreds in both formats, and the gaps are large.

The reason the argument persists anyway is that the two men made their claims on Indian cricket in different currencies. Ganguly captained India in 49 Tests and won 21 of them; Tendulkar captained in 25 and won four. In one-day cricket Ganguly led in 147 matches for 76 wins, Tendulkar in 73 for 23. Whatever one thinks about how much of a team's result belongs to its captain, that is a very large difference between two players from the same dressing room.

They also formed the most productive one-day opening pair India has fielded, which means the comparison has a third dimension: for years they were not alternatives at all, but two ends of the same partnership.

The full records

Format	Sachin Tendulkar	Sourav Ganguly
Tests	200 matches, 15,921 runs at 53.78, HS 248*, 51 hundreds, 68 fifties, 115 catches	113 matches, 7,212 runs at 42.17, HS 239, 16 hundreds, 35 fifties, 71 catches
ODIs	463 matches, 18,426 runs at 44.83, HS 200*, 49 hundreds, 96 fifties	311 matches, 11,363 runs at 41.02, HS 183, 22 hundreds, 72 fifties, 100 catches
T20Is	1 match, December 2006	None
First-class	310 matches, 25,396 runs at 57.84, 81 hundreds	254 matches, 15,687 runs at 44.18, 33 hundreds
List A	551 matches, 21,999 runs at 45.54, 60 hundreds	437 matches, 15,622 runs at 43.32, 31 hundreds
Test bowling	46 wickets at 54.17	32 wickets at 52.53
ODI bowling	154 wickets at 44.48	100 wickets at 38.49
First-class bowling	71 wickets at 61.74	167 wickets at 36.52
Test captaincy	25 matches, 4 wins	49 matches, 21 wins, 13 losses, 15 draws
ODI captaincy	73 matches, 23 wins	147 matches, 76 wins, 65 losses
International span	1989 to 2013	1992 to 2008

Both records are final.

The captaincy numbers, and what they do and do not prove

Ganguly's Test record as captain is 21 wins from 49 — a rate of about 43 per cent in an era when India had won overseas Tests rarely and Test cricket produced more draws than it does now. Tendulkar's is four wins from 25, about 16 per cent. In ODIs the comparison runs 76 from 147 against 23 from 73, roughly 52 per cent against 32.

Three cautions belong immediately alongside those numbers, and stating them is not a way of dismissing the gap.

The first is that Tendulkar captained a weaker side. His two spells came in the second half of the 1990s and around 2000, before the bowling attack that won Tests abroad existed and before the batting order of the 2000s had assembled. The second is that Ganguly's tenure coincided with the arrival of Sehwag, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan and a matured Dravid and Laxman — an unusually good group to inherit. The third is that captaincy statistics measure a team, and attributing a win rate to one player is a category error that everyone commits anyway.

What the record does support, without needing any of that adjudicated, is that Ganguly's leadership era produced results India had not previously produced. He batted at 37.66 as Test captain with five centuries and 38.66 as ODI captain with eleven, so the job did not cost him his own form. Tendulkar's batting as captain also held up, and his own assessment — that he preferred not to lead — is the reason the second spell ended.

Test cricket: 15,921 against 7,212

The Test gap is 8,709 runs and 11.61 in average, and no reading of the record narrows it much.

Ganguly's Test batting is genuinely good rather than great: 7,212 runs at 42.17 with 16 hundreds, a career of substantial contributions that rarely turned into the very large innings. His highest is 239, against Pakistan at Bangalore in 2007, made late in his career during the comeback that followed his exclusion — one of the more remarkable second acts in Indian cricket, since he had been dropped entirely and was widely written off.

Tendulkar's 51 Test hundreds and 200 appearances are at the top of the format's all-time lists. The comparison here is between a very good Test batter and one of the two or three best the game has had, and it does not require elaboration.

Where Ganguly gets closer is with the ball. He took 32 Test wickets at 52.53 and 167 first-class wickets at 36.52 with medium pace — the first-class figure is genuinely useful, and better both in volume and average than Tendulkar's 71 at 61.74. As a Test all-round contributor Ganguly did more with the ball than the international columns alone suggest, because he was a real fourth or fifth seamer at domestic level and only an occasional one internationally.

One-day cricket, where they were partners

The ODI comparison is closer than the Test one — 44.83 against 41.02, a gap of 3.81 — and the reason to be careful with it is that for a long stretch both men were opening the innings together.

Ganguly made 11,363 one-day runs with 22 hundreds and a highest of 183, made against Sri Lanka at Taunton during the 1999 World Cup. That innings was for years the highest score by an Indian in a World Cup match. His method as an opener was to hit through the line on the off side and to attack spin over the top, which was an unusual thing for an Indian top-order batter of that period to do routinely.

Tendulkar's 18,426 at 44.83 with 49 hundreds is the largest aggregate in the format's history. His 200 not out at Gwalior in 2010 was the first double century scored in an ODI.

The partnership is the point, though. The pair opened together across most of Ganguly's career and produced more runs as an opening combination than any other Indian pair, in an era when India's chief structural advantage in one-day cricket was that the first fifteen overs were usually won. The ODI cricket history guide covers how that side was built, and the most ODI runs for India list places both totals.

Ganguly's 100 ODI wickets at 38.49 also deserve a line. A batter who takes a hundred wickets in the format is a fifth-bowler option that allows a side to play an extra batter, and that flexibility mattered to the balance of the teams he captained.

Away from home, and 2002

The single result that anchors Ganguly's reputation is the drawn series in England in 2002, and the associated one-day final at Lord's that same summer.

India had not won a Test in England since 1986. Ganguly's side won at Headingley — a match in which India batted first on a green pitch, chose to bat, and made 628 for eight — and drew the series 1-1. The NatWest Series final at Lord's, chased down from a position that should not have been chaseable, produced the shirt-waving on the balcony that became the era's defining image and, more usefully, a demonstration that the side no longer expected to lose from behind.

Tendulkar scored heavily in that period and in every period, but the overseas results are the part of the record that belongs to Ganguly specifically as captain. The India England rivalry page covers those tours, and the test captains history guide places his tenure against the others.

After the playing careers

The two diverged completely afterwards, and it is relevant to how each is regarded.

Ganguly went into administration, serving as president of the Cricket Association of Bengal and then as BCCI president, and into franchise cricket as a mentor and director. Tendulkar stayed out of governance almost entirely, holding an ownership interest in a kabaddi side and various ambassadorial roles but no board position. The BCCI structure page sets out the offices Ganguly held.

In the IPL both played and neither dominated. Tendulkar captained Mumbai Indians from 2008 to 2013 and won the Orange Cap in 2010; Ganguly captained Kolkata Knight Riders in the competition's early seasons and later played for Pune. Both were at the end of their careers throughout, and the IPL most runs list reflects that.

The verdict

• Test runs, average, hundreds, first-class aggregate: Tendulkar, comfortably on all four.
• ODI runs, average, hundreds: Tendulkar, though the average gap is under four.
• Highest Test score: Tendulkar, but only just — 248 not out to Ganguly's 239.
• First-class wickets and bowling average: Ganguly, by a wide margin.
• ODI wickets: Tendulkar has more; Ganguly's come at a better average.
• Test wins as captain: Ganguly, 21 to 4.
• ODI win rate as captain: Ganguly, roughly 52 per cent to 32.
• Player you would build a batting order around: Tendulkar.
• Player you would hand a touring side that had never won abroad: Ganguly.

The defensible summary is that Tendulkar is much the better cricketer and Ganguly made a claim on the era that batting figures do not capture. Complete records are on the Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly pages, the player directory covers the side they played in together, and the cricket in India hub places both. The national batting list is most Test runs for India.

Sources and method

Both careers are closed and the batting and bowling rows are quoted from each player's published career record. Nothing in the table can move.

The captaincy figures need attribution. Ganguly's Test record of 49 matches for 21 wins, 13 losses and 15 draws, and his ODI record of 147 matches for 76 wins and 65 losses, come from his published captaincy summary, as do his batting averages while captain — 37.66 with five centuries in Tests, 38.66 with eleven in ODIs. Tendulkar's captaincy totals of 25 Tests for four wins and 73 ODIs for 23 wins are reported figures quoted as found; different sources occasionally differ by a match depending on how matches he led in an acting capacity are counted, so the win percentages here are given as approximations rather than to two decimal places.

The claim that Tendulkar and Ganguly are India's most productive one-day opening pair is a published partnership record rather than a calculation made here, and no aggregate figure for it is quoted because the totals in circulation vary with the qualification used.

The 2002 England tour details — the drawn series, the win at Headingley, India's first-innings 628 for eight, and the NatWest final at Lord's — are match records. The interpretation offered of what that tour meant is descriptive.

The three cautions about reading captaincy win rates are arguments, not measurements. No attempt has been made here to separate a captain's contribution from his team's quality, and any figure claiming to do so would be a model rather than a statistic.